Brigands M. C. (33 page)

Dante had seen the expression a thousand times, but he’d forgotten it. He felt like he’d betrayed his family by forgetting so much about them.

‘Are you OK, John?’ Anna asked. ‘Did I do something?’

Dante remembered that
he
was John and quickly smeared out the tear forming in his eye. ‘It’s the beer,’ he said weakly. ‘You’re pressing down on my bladder or something, I need to pee again.’

Anna hopped off and Dante rushed down the hallway to the Führer’s bedroom, where he bolted himself in the en-suite bathroom and fought off his tears.

*

James had been back at the Brigands compound for an hour, downing more warm beer as he helped to unload firewood and bundles of newspaper from one of the coaches to make a huge bonfire in the centre of camp. It wasn’t necessary for warmth, but the various clubs had a friendly rivalry that would turn Outlaw Hill into a series of giant pyres once it got dark.

Less friendly rivalries put menace in the air and as James hauled wood and newspaper he tried to decipher the rumours. The easiest to understand was the Vengeful Bastards wanting revenge after their surprise assault at the service station had ended in defeat. Some said they were planning a second attack. There weren’t enough Vengefuls to confront the Brigands, but they had allies and rumours swirled that several gangs were planning to raid the Brigands compound during the night.

It had also emerged that the London Brigand stabbed in the Flesh Tent had been seriously wounded by a member of a gang called Satan’s Prodigy. The London chapter and some northern Brigands regarded Satan’s Prodigy as enemies, but confusingly South Devon and Cardiff did business with them and wanted the whole thing smoothed over.

Outlaw Hill was a web of shifting alliances and the only conclusion James reached by the time the fire was lit was that it looked set to be a long and violent night. As the flames took hold, James wandered drunkenly through the twilight towards his tent. It was the first time he’d seen Will, Minted and Shampoo Jr since leaving the Flesh Tent more than four hours earlier.

‘Where’d you disappear to?’ Shampoo Jr asked as James lay back on the grass outside his tent and pulled off his trainers.

‘Nowhere,’ James said, as he caught a whiff of his own feet. His hands were black with newsprint and his deodorant had been overpowered inside his motorcycle leathers somewhere before Bristol. ‘I stink like a dog.’

‘This is nothing,’ Minted smiled. ‘You should have been here last year when it was raining. Outlaw Hill was solid mud. Head to toe, covered in filth and we had to walk the bikes through it.’

‘I’m still trying to get to the bottom of our friend’s little adventure,’ Will said. ‘So we saw you come out the Flesh Tent with the chick wearing your T-shirt.’

James shrugged. ‘Yeah, I had to walk to her van so she could get a top and give me my Ramones shirt back.’

‘And that’s it?’ Will said suspiciously. ‘Why were you gone for so long?’

‘Had to get these,’ James explained, as he opened his tent flaps and showed them a newly purchased set of riding gloves. ‘The others were all gashed up where I hit that dude with the chain and the Führer told me to burn ’em.’

‘Really?’ Shampoo Jr said. ‘So how come you’ve got lipstick all over your cheek?’

‘Have I?’ James said, rubbing the cleanest part of his hand against his face.

‘No you haven’t,’ Shampoo Jr roared. ‘But you just gave the game away, didn’t you?’

‘We followed you,’ Will explained. ‘And we waited a good few minutes for you to get out so we
know
you did more than swap shirts.’

‘I don’t get why you’re so shy about it,’ Minted laughed. ‘If I went into the Flesh Tent and scored I’d be screaming it from the rooftops.’

‘OK, I shagged her,’ James admitted reluctantly as he drained his beer bottle. ‘I can’t help being gorgeous. It’s no big deal, girls throw themselves at me all the time.’

‘Big-headed bastard,’ Will smiled as he offered James a high five. ‘Good on you, mate.’

But before James could raise his hand there was a huge bang near the edge of the Brigands’ camp. Everyone looked around thinking it was early fireworks.

‘Oh shit,’ Will said as he looked over tents at a pair of flaming Harleys that had been doused with petrol. ‘I think World War Three is about to break out.’

Other Brigands rushed forward and wheeled their Harleys away from the flames, while the two London Brigands whose bikes were burning sprinted towards the breakdown truck to grab fire extinguishers.

‘That’s the two whose mate got stabbed in the Flesh Tent,’ Minted said. ‘It’s gotta be Satan’s Prodigy.’

‘They’ve gotta be insane,’ Will said, as the faster of the two fat Brigands reached his bike and began blasting it with white carbon dioxide powder. ‘Satan’s Prodigy are outnumbered ten to one by Brigands.’

‘They’ve teamed up with the Vengefuls,’ Minted said. ‘They must have done.’

James smiled. ‘Unless someone who
wants
us to start a war with Satan’s Prodigy did it.’

‘Could be,’ Will admitted. ‘There are some sly people around.’

The heat from the flames expanded the air in the motorbike tyres. As the two owners desperately fought the flames, one tyre blew and the two blubbery men jumped back in fright and tripped over each other. It was high comedy, but nobody laughed.

‘Those bikes are wasted,’ Will said. ‘Even if they get the fire out before the petrol blows everything will be warped from the heat.’

As more extinguishers arrived and the flames were finally engulfed by the clouds of white powder, seven Brigands chapter presidents gathered for an urgent fireside conference. The voices were angry and James heard every word from thirty metres away.

Sealclubber was the most vocal, demanding that everyone tool up and immediately attack Satan’s Prodigy. The Führer urged him to calm down and not act until they were sure who was behind the attack.

‘You’re full of shit,’ Sealclubber screamed into the Führer’s face. ‘I’ve got a man stabbed, two of my full-patches’ bikes burned up on the grass and you’re telling me to hold back. I say we move now, and wipe Vengefuls and Satan’s Prodigy off the face of the earth.’

The Führer tried to calm Sealclubber down, but he wasn’t having it. The Führer realised that he was in a minority of one as dozens of inflamed full-patch Brigands gathered around him. The presidents took a vote and the Führer lost five to two.

‘Guns, knives, bats,’ Sealclubber shouted to the cheering crowd. ‘Tool up and ship out, the Brigands are going on the warpath.’

The sea and moonlight gave Nigel and Julian an eerie sense of calm as they came up from the crew quarters and stepped out on to the rear deck. Rods hung over the side, giving the impression of a boat hired for a night fishing trip.

‘What’s going on?’ Julian asked, unaware that his tall frame and curly hair were blocking the lens of a button-sized camera stuck to the doorframe above his head.

Riggs sat up on the bridge, while Paul Woodhead stood on deck shining a powerful lamp over the sea.

‘The Towmaster SONAR located our packages on the sea bed,’ Woodhead explained. ‘We’ve sent a signal to release the buoys attached to the packages. I need you two to open up the hold and set the ramp.’

The hold was accessed through a hinged metal cover. It took two arms to lift and the stench of rotting fish hit the two seventeen-year-olds as the hatch slammed down on the deck.

‘Sighted,’ Woodhead shouted up to the bridge, as the first of three fluorescent pink buoys broke the waterline thirty metres from the boat.

Riggs gave the engine a blast of power and threw on full rudder.

Woodhead eyed Julian and Nigel. ‘What are you standing there for? One of you get down there and set the bloody ramp.’

Nigel wasn’t keen, but Julian had done him a favour by agreeing to turn up, so it seemed fair that he should take the dirty end of the job. The hold’s metal floor boomed as his trainers landed in a fine layer of silt, with a centimetre of water sloshing about. He was overpowered by the warm fishy air as Julian passed down an inspection lamp that clipped over a hook on the ceiling.

‘You OK?’ Julian asked.

Nigel didn’t answer because he thought he might puke if he opened his mouth. He reached into the dirt and pulled up a sodden wooden board that latched over the sill of the hatch to make a ramp.

The trawler had slowed to a crawl and the pink buoy now bobbed five metres off the port side. Paul threw out a grappling hook and snared the rope attached to the base of the buoy. He then hauled the buoy in, hooked the rope over a pulley above the deck and looped the end around an electric winch.

The rear of the boat dipped as the winch raised the package from the sea bed fifty metres below. It emerged from the water, a sandy rectangle the size of a freezer and wrapped in a rubber membrane sealed with epoxy resin.

‘Give us a hand here,’ Woodhead ordered, as he leaned precariously over the side of the boat and grabbed a rope attached to the bottom of the package to help swing it around on deck. Julian tried to help and almost got his arm crushed as the boat rocked and the package slammed against the hull.

For their second attempt Woodhead snared the rope on the bottom of the package with the grappling hook, Julian took the top end and the pair managed to manhandle it on to the deck.

‘Jesus,’ Woodhead gasped, groaning from the exertion and wiping the sweat off his brow. ‘You did good. Now start slitting and sliding.’

As Riggs lined the boat up with the second buoy, Julian and Woodhead worked frantically. They slit open the rubber membrane and inspected the cardboard boxes inside.

‘It’s all dry,’ Woodhead grinned. ‘And that’s a lot of shooters.’

The writing on the boxes was mostly in Chinese script, but it didn’t take a genius to work out what was inside. Some were plain cardboard, but others were retail packs, printed in colour and advertising the benefits of the guns or bullets inside them.

Pulling up the packages and stashing the cargo was the riskiest part of the smuggling operation, especially on a calm summer Saturday when the yachts and pleasure craft were cruising and coastguard helicopters had plenty of moonlight to work with. Woodhead and Julian worked fast, carrying the heavy boxes across deck and sliding them down to Nigel who stacked them up in the stinking hold.

*

If you travelled with the Brigands you were expected to fight with the Brigands, so James had no choice as everyone piled out from between the tents, grabbing tent pegs, hammers, bike chains or whatever else came to hand.

Although the Führer had voted against the fight, his reputation as an outstanding leader meant that he was in charge of the attack. Two chapters including London would go after Satan’s Prodigy, four would attack the more numerous Vengefuls, while the Cardiff chapter would stay back to defend the camp. Most hangers-on and puppet gang members would fight with whatever Brigands chapter had brought them, but Cardiff didn’t have much backup so the Führer ordered two chapters of the Monster Bunch to stay behind.

As a hang-around, James could have gone with any group he fancied, but he chose safety over the chance of further fighting glory and stayed back with Will and the other Monsters. As six Brigands chapters led a noisy charge downhill, James joined a defensive line on the edge of camp. He stood two metres from Will, arms folded and wearing his new riding gloves with a length of bike chain wound around his left fist.

Satan’s Prodigy were a powerful gang, but their fourteen chapters were all based in northern England or Scotland and only two of them had come south for the Tea Party. The Brigands arrived to find that the Prodigy had packed up and taken refuge on other parts of Outlaw Hill. It was a victory of sorts, but most likely the start of a bitter feud that would flare up at runs and gatherings over months or years.

The Vengefuls were tougher opponents. The Brigands outnumbered them, but any Vengeful showing his face after the earlier rout was going to be tough and well armed.

The view down Outlaw Hill was lit by motorcycle headlamps and the huge bonfires. James caught glimpses of a medieval style battle, with screams, groans and metal hitting metal.

‘We should be down there,’ Will said eagerly, as he stood beside James.

But James didn’t like it one bit. CHERUB taught you to measure up an opponent and only attack when you knew you could win. In particular he remembered how his friend Gabrielle had almost died after being stabbed in a street brawl and his shorts and T-shirt offered no protection.

‘I’m going back to my tent for a second,’ James said. ‘I’m gonna grab a couple of tent pegs.’

But James really wanted protection. He unzipped his tent and grabbed the jeans he’d ridden up in and a blue hooded sweatshirt from his backpack. This was reinforced with a thin stab-proof lining and he pulled it on quickly.

As James crawled out of the tent he got blinded by three white headlamp beams. The bikes had crept on to Brigands territory from behind the portable toilets. James wasn’t the first to notice and as he put on his trainers several Cardiff Brigands were charging towards the invaders. With the headlamps shining in James’ face he couldn’t tell what the riders were up to until flames erupted over the line of non-Harleys owned by members of the puppet gangs.